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From Harvesting Darkness: New Poems 2019-20233
Terms of Art
(for Cherrie Moraga)
Some people, they claim, manage to die
peacefully in their sleep. How
can anyone tell that? How does anyone say
how anyone lives or could die—above all
in their sleep? For in that sleep who knows
what wakenings may come? The mystery slams shut
and locks behind you once you enter it. Only the one
question—what now?—endures. No matter
how you answer that, you're dead. Nyctophobia is fear
of darkness, octophobia fear of light. Terms of art.
The best you can long for and dread is to live
out your life as an artist, I'm betting. Preoccupied? Yes.
Arrogant? Certainly. Fools snarl, “Elitist”--as if
this didn’t demand obsession driving its relentless
harrow across your lifework’s form, plus pitiless
indifference to the cries of those who dared believe
you loved them—and so you did, for rare moments wedged between or at the edge of magic, when dailiness...
